On 22 May 2023, the Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) issued its judgment in case No. T-0761/20 on the appeal against the Examination Division's decision to reject a patent application for an invention named "Automated assessment of examination scripts". The application claims a system based on an analysis module which extracts and numerically quantifies linguistic features of text to form a feature vector, which is used to grade scripts on the basis of discriminative models. In order to assess the inventive step of the relevant patent application, the EPO assessed whether the invention makes a contribution which may be thought of as technical, i.e. it provides a solution to a technical problem. According to settled case law, the EPO ruled that a technical effect requires either a direct or an indirect link with physical reality. As such, the EPO rejected the appeal, finding that automated script-grading does not have an implied use or purpose which would be technical, as it does not entail any direct or indirect link with physical reality.
Originally published July 2023
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